which, with a Quotation from an alleged Letter by SMITH, also without name or date, appeared in the “Essay” in that Periodical, published in 1819, page xxxix., and subsequently quoted in succeeding Editions of Tannahill's Works.
"That scribbling of rhymes hath positively half ruined me. It has led me into a wide circle of acquaintances—of course, into an involuntary habit of being oftener in a public-house than can be good for anybody. Although I go there as seldom as possible, yet how often have I sat till within my last shilling, and, unlike some of our friends who are better circumstanced, had to return to my loom sick and feverish. This often makes me appear sullen in company, for if I indulge to the extent we have both seen in others, I am in for two or three days afterwards.” [1]
[1] We hesitated very much whether we should reprint the above quotation, given in a letter from Smith to Motherwell without name and date. We very much disliked the inference drawn by Smith from the anonymous quotation. If he had printed the whole letter other persons in reading it might have drawn a different inference. If the letter referred to by Smith was written before July, 1807, Tannahill had not spent his last shilling, as then he deposited £20 in the Paisley Union Bank; and if it was written after July, then Tannahill was fortified by having that sum in bank, where it lay at interest for three years thereafter.
In copying the above quotation our eyes caught the following remark of Smith on the preceding page (xxxviii) of the Essay respecting the music to “The Braes o Gleniffer,” No. 69;—“Mr. Ross of Aberdeen composed a very pretty air for it, yet, to use the phrase of a certain favourite vocal performer, it did not hit;” while Tannahill himself, in his letter dated 20th September, 1807, said—“It does capitally.” Perhaps it would have been as well that Smith should not have recorded this envious hit at his eminent rival, but when he did make it, he should not have concealed the name of the favourite performer.—Ed.